EP. 64 Find New Ways to Communicate To Strengthen Relationships on Your Hybrid Team

Team Anywhere Leadership Podcast

The way we communicate is more diverse than it ever has been. Or is it really? If you think about it, since the dawn of time, the two ways human beings have had to communicate are print and verbal communication. Today, we see those in perhaps newer ways through our email, chat groups and DM’s. Communication avenues haven’t changed much since the beginning, yet today, communication is getting increasingly more and more complicated. This begs the question, are these avenues we currently have truly enough to allow us to Team Anywhere?

On today's podcast, we interview Josh Little, a serial entrepreneur and founder of 4 remote businesses. Josh is on a serious mission to create a team communication platform that sucks less. While trying to collaborate with his remote teams, he discovered the true challenges of remote team communication. This led him to realize that it’s time to combine the richness of face-to-face interaction in an asynchronous time period, without the burnout of a Zoom Call. This led Josh to founding his fourth company, Volley.

The Volley App allows you and your team to send authentic video messages asynchronously. Think of it as having a face-to-face conversation that you don’t have to schedule. Volley can make your Daily Standups more productive, deepen relationships among team members, and make communicating remotely a lot more fun.

Building Business Relationships Post-Pandemic

In a hybrid and virtual work environment, developing relationships with your teams, colleagues and leaders is much harder. Leaders and teams are faced with the challenge of building relationships and trust through a screen, something much easier said than done.

The downside to a remote and hybrid work environment is the lack of spontaneous conversations that would typically occur in the office. These spontaneous conversations in the office allowed leaders to establish their leadership presence, and build trust fast. In hybrid and remote work, these conversations are now missing. Volley fills that void because it creates a more spontaneous, natural and authentic conversation you might otherwise have with someone in person. With Volley, your conversations flow more similarly to real time face-to-face conversations, allowing you to connect, communicate, build trust and deepen relationships.

Why Conversation Is Important in the Hybrid & Remote Work Environment

The objective of communication on a remote or hybrid team is to allow communication to flow as freely, or more freely as it did in the office.

Communication occurs two ways: through type or print (Slack, chat, or email) or verbally (in-person, Zoom, or phone call.)

Research has shown, typing is seven times slower than speaking verbally. Because of this, we tend to delay communication until we speak in person.

For remote and hybrid teams, this creates communication disasters. Team members end up going back and forth in Slack for way too long, write emails that could be a book, and end up realizing that they just need to talk. Before Volley, this meant that team members needed to schedule a time to talk together. This led to scheduling back-to-back Zoom meetings, ultimately creating Zoom Burnout.

Benefits of Verbal/Video Asynchronous Communication

• More Time to Mindfully Respond
• Creates Psychological Safety At Work
• Increase Conversational Turn-Taking
• Asynchronous Communication Helps Your Introverts

To read the full summary, click here.

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